Life Science Tools of the Trade

Following on from my last post, it appears that the Canadian federal government has decided not to fund Genome Canada at all. Which is dreadful news for the research community that I inhabit.

You can read an article by reporter Carolyn Abraham that made the front page of this morning’s Globe and Mail, right here (and excerpted below).

For the first time in nine years, Genome Canada, a non-profit non-governmental funding organization, was not mentioned in the federal budget and saw its annual cash injection from Ottawa – $140-million last year – disappear.

“We got nothing, nothing, and we don’t know why,” said a stunned Martin Godbout, Genome Canada president and CEO. “We’re devastated.”

This is potentially going to make it a lot harder to attract and retain highly qualified personnel to run these fancy “tools of the trade” that we have in our labs. There’s one last recourse I can think of – I believe the final debate on the budget is today. We’ll see if anything changes. Until then, I’m going to mope.

“Tools of the Trade”, you say. Well, I’m going to bend the definition of this blog a little (again), this time towards funding. Which is, of course, what enables us all to purchase the various and assorted goodies that we like to put in our labs.

Connection made. I’ll move on now.

For those of us in Canada, next Tuesday will be a day to watch. While our neighbours to the south have been wrapping up the hoopla surrounding the inauguration of their new President, we in the north have been quietly creeping closer to the tabling of a new federal budget. Our Minister of Finance, who tradition dictates I must refer to as “The Honourable Jim Flaherty“, will be dropping this particular bomb on us on the 27th.

This impacts many things, but the one I’ll be watching most closely is the funding allocation for Genome Canada, which is not only the major funder of large-scale “omics” research in this country, but also distinctly not a persistent line item in the federal budget. Each year, they lobby for funds based on the competitions they envision running and ongoing initiatives they need to support, and each year we all wait with varying degrees of bated breath to see what happens. Early in 2009, our federal administration is pretty shaky indeed, having been prorogued over the Christmas break, essentially to avoid a non-confidence vote headed by a coalition of opposition parties. Ah, the joys of a minority government. While things seems a bit more stable now, a mis-step on Tuesday could nevertheless bring the government down.

So, we’ll wait and see. I had, but did not take, the opportunity to introduce myself to the Minister while he and I were the same flight back from Washington in November (he in first class, returning from the economic summit, me in economy, returning from having lunch with a couple of fellow SAB members). Perhaps I should have mentioned genomics research to him then… but maybe it’s best I left well enough alone.

See you on Wednesday, then.

I’ve shamelessly plagiarized this from my personal blog. I guess I’ll have to pay myself royalties, or something.

For those of you who enjoy blogging, this looks like it could be fun:

It’s presented as a “blog swarm“, where not only are the organizers soliciting Darwin-themed blog posts to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth (February 12th, 1809), but are intending to aggregate them all as well. Regardless of your views on Darwin himself, his scientific prowess (or not), his writings, or evolution vs. intelligent design vs. whatever else, this still sounds like a very interesting initiative. As I’m firmly in the Darwin camp (although with reservations about certain of his published works, some of which are very tedious indeed), I’ll be participating, both here and over at the aforementioned personal blog.

You can too… click right here to find out how.

Thanks to Heather for alerting me to this.

Considering that I’ve managed only seven posts since my first one last March, and my fellow LSTOTT bloggers hwiegand and hbogerd haven’t posted in nearly four months and seven months, respectively, I’d say that this place is not exactly staying topical and up-to-date. In fact, it’s barely ticking over.

And, given that the average number of comments over the last ten posts is just less than two (1.9, range 0 – 5), with quite a few of those being my own responses to initial comments from others, I’d also venture to suggest that barely anyone’s reading it. Either that, or those who do are remarkably silent.

So – this begs the question. Is there any point to continuing this blog? I suppose it’s gratifying to see comments, and feel that others are reading, perhaps being stimulated to think about the topics of the posts a little, or at least being engaged. I know that the argument’s been made many times, by many people, that “we don’t blog just to get comments”, and I guess in some way that’s true. But I, personally, don’t blog in order to simply throw my thoughts into the wind – if nobody’s reading, what’s the point of writing publicly? I might as well keep a little notebook, or put it all on a private website.

This all may seem like whining, and perhaps it is. But if anyone’s interested in commenting, I’d like to hear it, as long as you’re not the same people who’ve been hitting the blog with spam comments about various activities consenting adults might engage in. Oh, and yes, I’m aware that I’m not the only SAB blogger who’s been thinking about moving on, shutting down, or finding another forum for his/her thoughts.

We’ll see, I guess. Happy New Year, everyone – new things, and all.